Seeking energy efficient solutions for clean water supplies

Research Overview

The activities of our group are in the broad area of heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics. Our focus is on technologies for desalination of seawater and brackish water, remediation of various waste waters, and recycling of water, with increased energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact as core objectives. This work includes thermodynamic cycle analysis, transport processes in components, solar-energy driven systems, and both thermal and membrane separations.

Past activities in our lab have included thermal management of electronics, high heat flux engineering, thermal stress and deformation, thermal manufacturing processes, liquid jet impingement cooling, instrumentation, thermally stratified turbulent flow, and thermally driven instabilities. Descriptions of some of these projects and publications are given in the links on the right.

G.P. Thiel and J.H. Lienhard V, “Entropy generation in condensation in the presence of high concentrations of noncondensable gases,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer,55:5133–5147, Sept. 2012. (doi link)